.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

I think Harold Bloom’s discussion of Wallace Stevens’ poem The Snow Man (in The Poems of Our Climate) is more complicated than it needs to be and strangely neglects to consider the theme of snow.

The snow man is “nothing” because he is made of snow — of the impermanent — while the “nothing that is there” is the more permanent things that snow will conceal, and the “nothing that isn’t” is the snow itself — the impermanent, the seasonal, the merely perceived.

To not hear “misery in the wind” means both to not imbue the purely material universe with human sentiment as well as to not find the wintry state miserable.

The poem.

Idea of Trump as being a kind of reverse financial crisis.,,, But I don’t know what I mean by that yet.

I suppose he’s the reverse in that people keep on bidding him up not because they think he has value but because they think he doesn’t… ?

Interesting. Noah Smith today compares Louis XIV to Putin and the printing press to social media in explaining our global drift toward despotism.

20 mars. — Resté toute la journée chez moi lire le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, de Dumas, très amusant et très superficiel. Toujours du mélodrame.

Mar-a-White House: No, destroying the physical structure of the White House is not as bad, on a moral scale, as blowing up boats carrying possibly innocent people to kingdom come. It’s not as bad, as a political science matter, as corrupting the Justice Department to criminally prosecute Trump’s critics. It’s not as menacing as sending troops into American cities. And yet, this hurt is particularly sharp.

Laura Rozen: The demolition of the White House East Wing, with no review or permission, is “kind of shocking,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told the Huffington Post’s Igor Bobic today. “I think people feel very possessive about it. It’s the People’s House.” At least, it was.

Tweet: Chinese state media has called the US a failed state, claiming it is “dying from within” as its global power wanes.

NYT: “In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,” Mr. Trump said. He also said — somewhat cryptically — that “certain areas are being left.” But the two senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans, confirmed that the entire East Wing was being demolished.

High, high above,
Pecks, pecks, pecks.

Low, low below,
Pecks, pecks, pecks.

All around
Dark woods abound,
Evening glows,
The leaves hang still.

High, high above,
Pecks, pecks, pecks.

Low, low below,
Pecks, pecks, pecks.

NYT: Just last week, the Society of Architectural Historians urged that “such a significant change to a historic building of this import should follow a rigorous and deliberate design and review process.” A few days later, demolition crews tore off the facade of the East Wing.

Cocaine: “It is interesting to note that although cocaine is pronounced as a disyllabic word it is trisyllabic in its formation” 

Eva took something off her top and then took something off her bottom. She took one more thing off her top and off her bottom. She took one thing off each of her feet and put one thing on that covered much of her central portion, without putting anything else on her feet. She moved to a new area and now her arms, which had been at her sides, reached out in front of her then pulled back. And her feet which had been beneath her head were at a level with her head. And her arms which had been silent when they swung at her sides now made loud sounds as she reached with them forward, and so also her legs which had been silent when they were beneath her head made noise now that they were at the same level. An old man hearing the sounds looked up, his face was frozen, then he looked down again and thought something. His hand was moving in front of him and he was thinking something and what he was thinking had to do with how his hand moved then he stopped moving his hand and looked at where it had been and what it had traced. “The old man thought something then was still,” it had traced. “Roger coughed.”

Finikin: Excessively dainty or fastidious.

Hard to tell at the level of the street but seemed like excellent attendance of the No Kings rally in D.C. today (The one on Penn and third). Event organizers say 200 k, which is believable. Mood was much more chill than at your average Stadium rock concert. Best sign I saw: “QUICK QUESTION FOR YOU: WTF?”

This is a question I haven’t thought of before or thought of in this way: “No country did more for Chinese prosperity than America. So why has no country done more to undermine America than China?”

Question, could Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction incorporate the mindset of Ulysses or Ulysses incorporate the mindset of Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction? Meaning by “mindset” the relationship of the writer to his writing.

Answer is no because they are essentially the same mindset but writing a different level of abstraction (Stevens being the more abstract.) Stevens could not be a character in Ulysses, thinking Notes, any more than the vocabulary of Notes could mingle with that of Ulysses.

ha aggiunto un cuoricino a un’immagine = added a little heart to an image

asphalt armies overwhelming the curbs, they are climbing the trench, the asphalts with their manhole shields, with their gas-line pipecover helms, with their yellow center lines of spears and no parking sign posts charging up the lots, totally overtaking the lots, such a victory for the asphalts, for the sun ! Romping around all over the clear asphalt pit in total victory is the light — the light, the pebbles, the gravel.

If a sentence of writing were equal to a moment in time:
a brick condo of the kind we just exited.

If a sentence were equal to a moment:
that is a concrete drainage gully tunnel, or culvert

This second concerns a bellowing bodily function.
This moment tracks a squirrel tail’s travails and tacs — then tacs.

This moment is like a bubble out of a thick sulphurous mud,
A “thought” or thinking about “perception qua hand.”

The curtain of seeing we stand behind: putting the idea in through
Its fabric, we find it now seen or heard.

Interesting (though I can’t read the article): Beijing believes it has found US’s Achilles’ heel: Trump’s fixation on the market.

Collop: slice of meat; roll or fold of flesh; a small piece, portion or slice.